Proudfoot
by sangga
Summary: Wednesday night, working late...


Title: Proudfoot

Author: sangga

Rating: G

Disclaimer: Nah, s'not mine. I wish.

Email: sangga55@hotmail.com

Archive: I'd love you – especially if you email first.

Summary: Wednesday night. Working late. A song comes on the speakers and your feet start moving…

Note: Fluffity fluff fluff fluff. Insert your favourite song here. For the record, it was Ben Harper's "Working your Way from the Ground on Down" for me.

Spoilers: Trance is still purple, but Rev has gone. Sniff. Would've been entertaining to see him dance, too.

Feedback: Lie to me.

****

Proudfoot

****

Wednesday night. Working late. And a lone voice, in Command.

"…set track 2. Volume at 3, adjustable room levels. And Play, shipwide."

****

Shipwide, then.

Herbarium.

__

She unfurls slow, she's had her arms around the giant tree in the centre, her little rejuvenation, and when she feels the hum start it's like tiny electricity. Current builds in her arms and she lifts them, twirling, grinning, until the slide screech kicks in. Then she shivers through and through, giggles and laughs, hips lilting gently, tossing, turning, her hands trace flying patterns as her head bobs. She lets her head go back and swings with the guitar – foreign rhythms translated by her body into familiar movements as she dances among the plant-life.

She closes her eyes, and her tail, sinuous, stroking up and down the air, as Trance shimmies…

****

Observation deck.

__

He is watching stars and making calculations – he's always calculating – on the mempad when the sound kicks in. His first reaction is a frown – first reaction always a constant – until he realizes what it is, and then his eyes soften, then his whole face, and then before he can stop himself he's half-smiling. He shakes his head and returns his focus to what he was doing, but the rhythm is so insistent that the next time he tosses back his hair he's in time. He shifts his weight, then smoothes his jaw, and that's on a beat too. Disconcerting.

He straightens and pushes off the window bar, and finds his head lightly nodding, and then he grins at himself, and relinquishes, and unbinds himself from his own control, and lets himself sway, with the music speaking to him soft and deep in a language he understands. He used to move like this before, he remembers – nights with fires, drums and laughing, and women like jewels in radiance.

So he closes his eyes and feels the music like an earth tremor, like an avalanche gaining ground. And the movements of the martial arts are not so unlike the movements of the dance, so Tyr sets down the mempad and sets his arms, and checks for space…

****

Hangar.

__

She's wearing protective glasses and checking powerlines, with coolant stains on her overalls, and when the hums starts she thinks it's a Maru thing – until recognition jerks her up, and she grins wide, showing teeth.

"Nice one, Rommie," she laughs, and keeps working with the shifter, letting her body swing and take shape from the music. But by the time the drums shoo in an explosive growl she's distracted, lips pouting and head bobbing, and after a few more twists she drops the shifter on the hangar floor to dance. It feels like it's been…too long, and she's happy to let loose in the privacy of the Maru's bulk, pushing the glasses up into her hair, and shimmy and groove and her hands skim down over her toned self, hips bucking, and she feels steam rise. Lots of steam, and sweat, sublimated into slipstream rhythms – this is what it feels like when…

And when the guitar slides and the vocals hitch she slides and hitches in sync, bare shoulders gleaming and eyes closed and a grin on her face, and Beka dances like she makes love, smooth and sultry movements tanged with salt and earth and ozone…

****

Workshop.

__

He's working on something – he's always working on something, busy fingers – so when the rhythms come they're an imposition on his consciousness at first, machine rhythms are so different… Then sanity and humanity call him back and he squints and smiles and then he hears something he hasn't heard for, well, quite while.

"Damn – that's feedback!"

He gets so excited he jumps onto the workbench and steps on a jigsaw trying to get closer to the speakers, then when the guitar screams into the verse he laughs – he's ten again – and he jumps down and funk, and it feels like surfing.

"Geez…take volume to 8."

He likes to be surrounded with it, enclosed and enveloped in sound, warmed like the ocean. He swivels and spins around the workshop and then, inspired, he grabs his goggles and the welder and starts flaring at the thing he's working on, and the sparks fly and Harper laughs again, wild, and thinks that he can do anything, anything…

It's Wednesday night, he's working late, and he's heading for somewhere else when the strains of the music hit his ears, so he reverses course and makes for Command, where open doors reveal Rommie at the panel, punching data.

He smiles.

"Are you enjoying this?"

She looks up, knowing he was there, with a tilt on her lips.

"Sure. Aren't you?"

"Sure."

He's curious, he didn't even know this was her style.

"And how about the rest of the crew?"

"Oh, I think they're doing okay. Normally I wouldn't impose my own tastes shipwide, but this…"

She shrugs, and Dylan grins.

"Well, it's not bad… I didn't know you went in for old-fashioned rock'n'roll, Rommie."

"I go in for lots of things."

She's punching again, nonchalant, and the music slips into the conversational cracks. Dylan listens.

"Hm. Late twentieth century…Terran?"

"Very good. Do you know the musician?"

He shakes his head and she supplies details.

"Jonathon Proudfoot, 1999. These recordings are pretty ancient – I had to remaster them."

"Nice." He watches her fingers fly. "And what do the rest of them think?"

"See for yourself."

She hits a button and the viewscreen splits and shuffles. Four people coalesce.

Rommie giggles.

"Look at Harper."

The little engineer has his goggles around his neck and is dancing around the workshop with the welder, playing air-guitar. Dylan frowns and grins simultaneously.

"He better not set anything on fire in there." His eyes light over to the next screen "Well, Trance certainly seems to be having a good time."

They watch a lilac flower unfold and spin on the viewer, smiling and wiggling unabashed. Rommie smiles.

"And can you believe Tyr…"

The man dances with a kind of formal elegance – he seems only to lack a partner to mirror the moves and make the play complete. Dylan thinks that he recognizes some of the gestures from hand-to-hand training…

Then his eyes are drawn left. Rommie notices.

"As for Beka…"

The blond woman has her coverall zipped down and the loose arms of the suit tied around her hips, a complement to her black crop top. The way she swings her hips is unnerving - with her lips parted and her eyes closed, it makes Dylan think of something…altogether different. He blinks and clears his throat.

"I, uh, don't think we need to do any more comparison studies of the crew's personal dancing styles – Rommie?"

But she's looking at the screen, one eyebrow raised.

"Beka could do that for a living on some planets, although I'm not sure it'd be strictly legal on a few of them…oh, sorry."

The screens clear and disperse.

"So – is it okay to keep playing it?"

Dylan grins and turns to leave.

"It's your ship, Andromeda."

Rommie blinks for a second.

"Hm. So it is."

"Goodnight, then."

"Goodnight."

And Dylan wanders back to his quarters to pour himself a drink and do some dancing of his own.

__

Finis.


End file.
